Summery Patchwork Quilt

I've had a fat quarter bundle of Lotta Jansdotter's fabric collection called "Echo" in my stash for quite a while now and these last few sunny summer days left really got me in the mood to use them up. I'm not sure why, but these fabrics just scream summer to me. 

I separated the fat quarter bundle into 3 different fabric groupings. The first bundle of fabrics for the quilt were navy, gold/yellow, gray, and a little brown. 




I was looking for a solid fabric to compliment the prints, and nothing screams summer like a natural linen fabric. Rumor has it that linen shrinks considerably compared to the quilting cotton, so I washed my linen yardage first.
 

I cut the fabric into 5 inch squares and mapped out a patchwork quilt pattern. I randomly selected print fabrics and alternated them with the natural linen fabric. Well, it was mostly random, my only rule was that the printed fabrics have to be more than 2 blocks away from the same print. The semi-randomly placement of the fabrics worked out pretty well, with only a few re-arrangements to get the final quilt layout set.

 

Now I have the quilt top fully pieced and I am trying to decide on backing and a quilt pattern. Part of me wants to buy some yardage of one of the Echo prints to complete the back, but maybe I can fish some yardage out of the stash. Not sure yet, but hopefully I will get the quilt finished soon. My quilting time is definitely dwindling now that knitting season is in full swing, so we shall see.

HOLLER!